Entire Louisiana Island Population To Be Transplanted with Federal ‘Climate Resilience’ Funds

ENTIRE LOUISIANA ISLAND POPULATION TO BE TRANSPLANTED WITH FEDERAL ‘CLIMATE RESILIENCE’ FUNDS Meanwhile, in Isle de Jean Charles: Planning is currently in the works to resettle roughly 60 people following the gradual disappearance of more than 90 percent of their island due to a combination of industrial and climate change factors, including sea level rise, subsidence, erosion along manmade channels, and the blocking of wetland-rebuilding sediments by levees and other flood-control structures. The community, mostly members of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Chocktaw tribe, is frequently blocked by flooding from jobs and schools on the mainland. In January, the first-ever  federal National Disaster Resilience Competition awarded $92 million dollars to the state of Louisiana, which has lost nearly 1,900 square miles of coastal land since the 1930s. Some of the money will go to the Isle de Jean Charles move, and the rest will seed a state fund to help finance other coastal “resilience” projects anticipated in the coming years. A total of $1 billion dollars for similar projects was awarded through the competition to 13 applicants (8 states and 5 communities); the city of New Orleans received a separate grant for $141 million. [New York Times, U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development]

5 Comment

  • I thought Swamplot was for Houston real estate? Is it for pushing the global warming…err climate change farce now?

  • @C’mon: Yeah, how could rising sea levels possibly have anything to do with Houston area real estate? What a farce!

  • Careful, once a precedent is set… we’ll have to rescue every Pacific island nation and all of Bangledesh

  • The loss of coastland in Louisiana has everything to do the Mississippi River. It has very little to do with global climate change.

  • So far, two of the four comments here illustrate the typical defection-from-climate-change strategy of deniers.

    @ Rex: the article mentioned sea-level rise as one of four contributing to factors, which is both detailed and accurate in comparison with your facile assertion.

    @ C’mon: over the past few decades, Houston floodings have gone way, way up for two reasons: 1) we’ve paved over water-absorbing prairie and wetlands; 2) the incidence of unusually drenching storms has become … usual. So much for farce.

    You both might wish that Swamplot never mention stories that involve changing climate and its impact on the Gulf coast because that contradicts your politics, but, as a Gulf coast resident in Houston, I’d prefer to be better informed.